Imperial College London
Games and Media Event (GaME '06)

Why it's so important that brilliant people like you make video games, and how you can contribute to the future of this most exciting medium.

The talk will highlight a few new audio-visual methods of accessing media repositories, for example "search by example" and novel modes of browsing. We will look at some of the scientific challenges in this area and also at commercial applications

This talk will emphasize the point that gameplay has to remain paramount and technology should be a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.

Machine understanding of facial expressions could revolutionize human-machine interaction and ambient intelligence technologies and fields as diverse as security, behavioral science, medicine, and education. In security contexts, facial expressions play a crucial role in establishing or detracting from credibility. In medicine, facial expressions are the direct means to identify when specific mental processes are occurring. In education, pupils' facial expressions inform the teacher of the need to adjust the instructional message. As far as natural interfaces between humans and computers (PCs / robots / machines) are concerned, facial expressions provide a way to communicate basic information about needs and demands to the machine. Where the user is looking (i.e., gaze tracking) can be effectively used to free computer users from the classic keyboard and mouse. Also, certain facial signals (e.g., a wink) can be associated with certain commands (e.g., a mouse click) offering an alternative to traditional keyboard and mouse commands. The human ability to read emotions from someone's facial expressions is the basis of facial effect processing that can lead to expanding interfaces with emotional communication and, in turn, to obtaining a more flexible, adaptable, and natural interaction between humans and machines. Three systems for fully automatic recognition of facial muscle actions (i.e., atomic facial gestures) in face video will be presented in this talk. A case-based reasoning system capable of classifying facial expressions (given in terms of facial muscle actions) into the emotion categories learned from the user will be presented as well. An overview of how this technology can be applied in the game industry will conclude the talk.

The creation of images which are indistinguishable from photographs is a longstanding problem in computer graphics. There are several existing techniques to create photorealistic images such as radiosity and ray tracing. Unfortunately, these methods can take minutes or possibly hours to produce a single image. In contrast to these methods, I will present Precomputed Radiance Transfer, a technique which enables the rendering of objects with natural lighting, producing realistic soft shadows and interreflections - all rendered in real-time.

This talk will cover two main elements - one part will be a critique of creativity in the games industry, with the other half exploring the methodology and inspiration behind Introversion's games.

Mario will present an overview of some of the key graphical techniques used in developing a first-generation game for a next-generation platform as well as the motivations behind them and a brief look at future directions.

How can university research strengthen the games software industry? What are the key technology areas for long-term research? What can be done to develop the relationship between universities, the industry, and research funding agencies? This short session will be driven by questions and comments from the audience and speakers, and participants are encouraged to join in.